


Reliance

by Donda



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Max's Headspace, POV First Person, Platonic Soulmates, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 03:22:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5481497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Donda/pseuds/Donda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An exploration of Max's headspace as he and Furiosa build their trust.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reliance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [radical-rad1986](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=radical-rad1986).



> My Mad Max Secret Santa gift for [radical-rad1986](http://radical-rad1986.tumblr.com)! Merry Christmas!

My mind is a mess. Frantic, desperate. I wake up in a pile of sand, and there’s nothing but terror and fire and pain.  
  
Need to get free. Need to run. I try to shoot a guy’s hand off just to get loose. Doesn’t work. I haul him with me, dead weight.  
  
I find a truck. I find water. Words are hard to find, but I don’t need words: I have a gun. I think I’ve found freedom, too, but it’s gone when she tackles me. The Imperator-Gone-Rogue. She almost kills me, almost beats me, but somehow I pin her down. Don’t know how. Doesn’t matter. With a gun to her skull, I breathe, and I try to clear my head. Try to think.  
  
I get my freedom, I take my jacket, and I take the truck. My brain calms a little. Now just need to get this thing off my head. But my plan doesn’t work. The truck stops, the panic comes back. I try to hold it together. Kill switches, she says. The Imperator tries to force my hand, but I’m willing to wait for the war party instead. Only bargaining chip I have. Really, I just want to escape, but if I let them in, they can gang up on me. They did before. Not a good option. So I’ll risk dealing with the warlord and his army. He apparently wants them back, and maybe he’ll grant me my freedom in exchange.  
  
But her words “you want that thing off your face?” break my resolve. That’s exactly what I want. She doesn’t like me, has no reason to. But in her words I hear “I’ll give you that. _They_ will not.”  
  
I’m angry that she’s won, and I’m scared as I let her in. I cling to my gun like a lifeline. But I know, deep in my brain, there’s no freedom back there. I’m just a commodity to the warlord and his army. The muzzle would stay on, I’d go back into a cage. But with her, there’s a chance. And true to her word, she gives it to me.

 

* * *

  
With a clack, the file breaks through, and the muzzle finally comes off. I fling it off the side of the Rig and feel a little more like myself, a little less like a trapped animal. My head clears a little more. But the feeling of relief fades a bit as I get back to the cab and remember the mess I’ve gotten myself into. I slip back in while they’re distracted, but as the women dangle the War Boy out the open door and yell in rage, I have to wonder if I’m going to be next. I may have the guns, but I’m not delusional. I know they could take me down if they really tried. The thought is a bit terrifying, to be honest. But they throw the War Boy out and they settle, and I settle too, at least a little.  
  
The Imperator says she made a deal. Tells the other women to get back in the hold. I watch, baffled, as they disappear into a hole in the floor, and she turns to me. “I need you here. You may have to drive the Rig.”  
  
I look back at her, even more confused. Not words I had expected to hear. She must be desperate, to ask that of me after I tried to steal this thing. I grunt a response at her. I don’t understand why she’d trust me, but I won’t argue. All I want is to get away.  
  
The last of the women in back is climbing down under the cab, and I point a gun at her, dredging up half-forgotten words to tell her to stay. I have to maintain some amount of control here. I haven’t had control of my life in far too long, and I can’t give these people the room to turn the tables on me.  
  
“Whatever you do, you can’t be seen. I’m supposed to be alone. That was the deal.”  
  
I glance back at the Imperator. She seems to want to get away just as badly as I do, and I realize it’s not in my interest to mess with her means of doing that. I jump up and climb quickly into the hatch, and wave the pregnant woman down next to me. We enter the canyon.  
  
“Hey. What’s your name?”  
  
I stare. What right does she have to know? My name is my own. One of the last things I have that’s still mine. (And I hear it enough already from the dead. I don’t need to hear it from the living.) For that matter, why does she care? What am I to her? I’m just something that got in her way.  
  
“What do I call you?” she presses, looking over her shoulder at me.  
  
“Does it matter?” I’m not going to be sticking around any longer than I have to anyway.  
  
“Fine. When I yell ‘fool,’ you drive out of here as fast as you can.” She looks at me pointedly, and I raise my brows. Gutsy thing to say to someone holding a gun on you.  
  
She tells me the kill switch sequence, asks me if I have it, and I nod. There she goes again. Treating me like I didn’t just try to steal her rig and then hold a gun on her and the other women. Maybe she has no alternative. Maybe she’s as desperate as I am. I click the safety back on on my gun. I don’t think she’s going to try to turn on me anymore. But I won’t put it down. I’m not that trusting.  
  
She stops the truck and gets out, and I wait. I could run now, if I wanted to. I have the kill switch sequence. I could just leave all this behind and… No. The others wouldn’t take that very well, for starters, and I tell myself again there’s no need to mess things up if she has it under control. She trusted me. Maybe I can trust her, too, at least in this.  
  
But it quickly becomes clear that she doesn’t have this under control. The men outside don’t sound happy. The woman beside me… is she… is she going into labor? Oh no, bad timing. Very bad timing, lady.  
  
And then the word “fool” reaches my ears, and I spring into action as shots ring out, pushing everything else out of my mind. It’s time to run. Time to fight. It’s kill or be killed. This is what I’m familiar with. This is something I can do without even thinking. It’s time to _survive_ , by whatever means necessary.  
  
We do survive. All but one. One fell, and I couldn’t stop it. Maybe it was even my fault. She had it, she was fine. And then she slipped. I add her face to the growing collection of those that follow me. But we have to keep moving. The Imperator asks me if I saw her die, her eyes asking me if it’s worth going back or not. The truth is, I’m not actually sure she went under the wheels, but the Imperator takes my word when I tell her she had. I don’t know if she believes me or not, but we can’t stop either way. She knows that as well as I do. To stop now is to ask for death.  
  


* * *

  
Somehow I’ve gone from being a terrified mess fighting for my life and willing to throw this woman under the wheels in order to serve my own purpose, to trusting her a startling amount. Never mind that she had tried to shoot me in the head. Twice. It doesn’t matter anymore.  
  
Only hours ago, I had found myself handing her a gun without even thinking. After what I had done, she would have been well within her rights to just shoot me in the head and push me out of the Rig then and there. And she could have, too. But she didn’t, and instead we shared a look, and I think in that moment we both knew what the other was thinking. We were in this together now.  
  
Now she’s the one handing me a gun, saying “leave him to me,” and aiming the pistol at the War Boy in the driver’s seat of the War Rig. The same War Boy who made me fairly sure ‘everyone else’ was the answer to my question of who was more crazy. I may be mad, but at least I have some sense of self-preservation. This guy? Not so much.  
  
“Say, anyone notice that bright light? Encroaching gunfire?”  
  
Yeah, probably should take care of that.  
  
I drop to one knee and aim. If I can just take out our pursuers, stop them or cripple them somehow, it would buy us time. I fire.  
  
“You’ve got two left!”  
  
I pause. Great, thanks for the reminder. No pressure. I steel myself and try again. But the light coming toward us doesn’t stop, the gunfire continues.  
  
The Imperator comes up behind me. She doesn’t say a word. I glance back, and she hovers, but doesn’t push or ask or order. I lick my lips nervously and take another look through the scope. One shot left, and the threat is getting closer. If I could just— no. She’s already shown herself to be an excellent shot with this thing, and we need to make this last shot count. I close my eyes, swallow my pride, and lift the gun to my shoulder. She has to be the one to do it. I’ll just have to trust that her marksmanship is good enough for this.  
  
She takes it, and I immediately see the barrel out of the corner of my eye again. Is she— is she really going to fire from right behind me? I mean, I know we’re in a hurry here, but…  
  
I feel it rest against my shoulder, a heavy, pressing weight. Support. She needs a steady support. Maybe even she can’t make this shot alone. I glance over at the barrel just inches from my face, one brow rising in justified concern. Okay, this is going to hurt.  
  
“Don’t breathe.”  
  
My lungs instantly go still.  
  
The sound of the shot rips through my skull, but I force myself to keep steady. The light in front of us blinks out as a piercing ring drowns out all other sounds, and I take a breath.  
  
I was right. That hurt.  
  
I blink through the pain and shake my head, trying to jar the ringing noise out. It doesn’t really work. But there’s no time to waste worrying about that. We still have to move. The rifle lifts from my shoulder, and without a word, she’s gone.  
  
I rush toward the front of the Rig as the War Boy pulls at the winch cable. No time for distrust. We have to get this Rig out of the mud.  
  
We work together.  
  
It’s a close call, with a bit of embarrassingly desperate clinging to a slowly-falling tree, but the War Boy comes through in the end, and the Rig is moving again. I clamor up the side and cling to the door. We glance at each other, and he laughs a little. I’m not sure that’s the proper response here, but at least he’s not trying to die in a blaze of glory and take me down with him, so I’ll take it. And if he’s on our side now, if he’s willing to help us survive… maybe I can find it in myself to forgive.  
  
When we stop, I gather a gas can, a couple explosives, and a weapon. The engines need cooling, and we’re not going to make it if someone doesn’t get rid of the madmen following us.  
  
I tell the Imperator to move the truck. Need more space. This might get messy. She actually looks… I can’t quite place it. Worried? Is that worry? Or disbelief? Disbelief that I’d do something like this? She asks what to do if I’m not back in time, and I pause. I thought that would be obvious. “Well, you keep moving.” If I’m not back by then, I’m probably either dead or captured. We didn’t go back for the one who fell, and there will be no going back for me. Not if they’re going to make it out of this.  
  


* * *

  
Nearly a full day later and I think maybe they’ve finally found the hope they were looking for. But now I watch the Imperator stumble away from the group and up to a dune, a shell-shocked expression on her face. I know that look. I’ve seen it on others, and I’m sure it has been on my own face before. She drops to her knees and her scream is rage, pain, loss. I don’t need to have heard what the others said to know what happened. Her green place is gone, everything she had hoped for is lost. I understand that far more than I would like to. And for the first time in longer than I can remember, I feel a twinge in my chest, pain that is not my own, but felt for somebody else.  
  
That night I stay away from the others. No point in getting involved. No point in getting to know them any more than I have. I’ll be gone in the morning anyway. I keep myself occupied by marking the Citadel on my map, large and red in my own blood, a reminder of what they took, and a warning to never go back there again.  
  
The Imperator approaches, asks to talk to me in a voice softer than I thought her capable of. I don’t think there’s anything to talk about, at least not to me. I’m not part of her crew, not one of her people. Working and fighting together was necessity, nothing more. I get up anyway, and follow her. She stares out at the salt flats for a moment, then tells me her plans, her voice low. She’s been broken by her loss, but she’s not going to stop. There’s still a bit of hope left in her.  
  
“One of those bikes is yours. Fully loaded.”  
  
I look up at her, a little surprised.  
  
“You’re more than welcome to come with us.” she glances down as she speaks, her body language almost shy. Not a posture I would ever have expected to see on her.  
  
She looks back at me, awaiting my answer, and I stare back, silent for a moment. She actually wants me there. This isn’t any kind of debt she’s trying to repay. She wants me around. But I’ve already made my decision. These people’s fight is not my own, our escapes no longer depend on each other. It’s time to go my own way. I tell her this, and she turns her back to me. She nods like she had known that of course that would be my answer, and some part of me twinges again, and I realize I actually feel a little bad about my response. She wasn’t asking anything of me, just offering. No, that’s not right. She _was_ asking. She was asking for my company, my trust, my support in the continued struggle for survival. She was asking for my strength in return for hers, a deal that would benefit us both. It was hardly anything to ask, really, but I couldn’t give it. She lets out a short breath, and turns abruptly to leave.  
  
I know there’s no hope on the path they’re going to take, but she holds on to hope. It’s not my problem. I don’t need to get involved. But part of me wants to warn her. I can’t help her, but maybe she can help herself. “You know, hope is a mistake.” I look at her as she stops and turns back toward me, her expression hard. “If you can’t fix what’s broken, you’ll, um,” I pause, but I know exactly what happens when you can’t fix what’s broken. “You’ll go insane.” It’s not a comforting bit of advice, but it’s all I have to give. She stays as I speak, then turns to leave without a word, and I’m not sure if my words fell on hearing ears or if she disregarded them as the ravings of a madman.  
  


* * *

  
They give me the bike anyway. It’s piled high with supplies, every bit of it worth its weight in water or guzzoline. I’ve seen men kill for less than this. And they just give it to me. Things they could have used themselves.  
  
Maybe if I remembered how to be a civilized man, I would have thanked them. But I just stared, baffled and silent as they packed the bike up and left it behind. It’s enough for me to survive on for weeks. And I’m free now. I can go my own way, just like I wanted.  
  
But I don’t get on. I don’t go my own way. I stand there and watch them ride out into the distance. There’s no hope out there. They’re riding to their deaths, 160 days from now. Whatever she thinks is out there, she won’t find it. I know this. But I let them go. It’s not my problem. My only problem is my own survival.  
  
But I can’t shake that twinge in my chest. I can’t shake the memory of the trust we found. Barely two days, and I felt more connected to her than I had felt to anyone in longer than I could remember. That connection is enough of a reason to turn and ride away. Getting attached to a person is a dangerous thing to do in this world. It only ever ends badly. I try to make myself turn. I tell myself I don’t owe her anything. But I realize it’s not about owing. It’s about what I need to do.  
  
_“Where are you, Max?”_  
  
I turn, reaching for my gun at the sound of the voice. Someone behind me? No, it’s the voices again. I hadn’t expected it, and I realize suddenly I haven’t heard the dead in over two days. I hadn’t even noticed, but now that I think about it, it hasn’t been that quiet in my head in a very long time. Something had kept them at bay. Now that I’m alone, they echo though my brain again, uncomfortably familiar, and I look back toward the disappearing group of bikes.  
  
Glory is suddenly there, that girl who died because I left. She reaches toward me, and my hand snaps up to my forehead on reflex. That was… weird. I stare at my hand, wondering what possessed me to do that, and I see Glory fade back into my vision, in the distance, walking the way the bikes went. She urges me on, and I know there’s no helping it now. I can’t let them run to their deaths when the answer is the other direction. I turn to the bike.  
  
There’s a black scarf tucked under one of the straps. I had watched the Imperator put it there as they packed up to leave. It’s the same as hers, and I can’t help but think that it has some meaning that is lost on me. Something about the way she looked at it before she turned and left, the way she avoided my eyes. She hadn’t said goodbye. Hadn’t said a word. She just left me this offering, small in comparison to the bike and supplies she had also given me, but somehow much more significant. I wrap it around my neck and swing my leg over the bike.  
  
She was right. We’re stronger together. What she had said last night had been an offer as much as it was an unspoken request. _Help me find redemption, and I’ll help you in return._ I didn’t think redemption was what I needed. Or maybe that I didn’t need her help to find it. I’d done my bit, it was time to move on. But I was wrong, I’m not done yet. If I turn my back now, I’ll be going in the exact opposite direction of redemption. And so will she.  
  
I kick the engine to life. Time to go fix what’s broken. Together.


End file.
